"But I bet that the morning, in the morning, we'll find us in bloom…"

Columbus Marathon Training: Week 12 – Fall is in the Air

Week 13 starting bringing more evidence of the coming of fall. In fact, I wore a shirt most of the week during my runs! 😉

I was feeling a little rough Monday morning after Sunday’s hot race so I cut my run in half, focused on recovery, and tacked the remaining miles onto runs later in the week. I also switched around my speed work to happen on Thursday instead of the usual Wednesday work. It was beautiful and cool Thursday morning so this turned out to be in my favor.

This weekend was a cutback week for my training group, but my friend Katie and I both had additional miles to do so we met up at 5 am to get some miles in together before the group run. It was a beautiful, cool morning and I was looking forward to hours of running. There were more people on the trail than I expected that early and I think it had to do with the Buckeyes were kicking off their first game of the season at noon. I love running on the trail down by campus on football game days. Everyone is in such a great mood and there is so much spirit around. As we approached our turn around point we came out of a very wooded part of the trail to see the Lane Ave bridge glowing in front of us. Katie had her phone so I asked her to snap a picture to share, although it doesn’t really do it justice.

We met back up with the group and the group run took us just past the Lane Ave bridge and set us up perfectly to do another picture at the Shoe. Another benefit of game day is that there are always people around and willing to take our group picture so no one needs to be left out!

After the quick picture we circled around the Shoe and the group began heading back. I decided to continue on and then turn when I needed to for the second half of my run by myself. There were plenty of people out and I knew I’d catch up with some of the other pace groups on my way back so there would be no shortage of people to say hello and chat with along the way.

On the way back past campus the marching band was out practicing the last section of the Overture of 1812 and it made the run feel pretty epic.

I was really happy with my long run this weekend. I decided to stick with the 10:15s for the group miles, but ran by heart rate with Katie and when I was on my own. Now I’m going to get nerdy. It was still a little humid when we first started out so those miles were the slowest, the group was a little quick averaging closer to 10:10 but my heart rate was in zone 2 for those miles, and then I was averaging sub-10s on my own until cardiac drift kicked in for the last 3 miles. It was great to see my pace improve throughout my run while maintaining the same average heart rate.

I finished up the week with an easy shakeout run Sunday morning followed by my strength class. I felt I got a lot out of class this weekend and was surprised at how good I felt after hours of running the day before.

After my long run on Saturday I ate some food and took a quick shower before heading down to the Fashion Meets Music Festival with my husband. A local band we like was playing and there was a New Balance Running fashion show on the schedule shortly after. This is the third year this festival has been put on and it was not good. We had 2 day VIP passes I’d won at a charity silent auction and I was so glad my money went to charity instead of the festival itself. That’s a different story for another post later this week, but we did at least manage to enjoy the one concert we watched and the fashion show.

NB Running fashion show

Life was very hectic this past week and I’ve fallen behind on reading/commenting on my favorite blogs, but things will settle down in the next few weeks. This is the last full month of training and I am starting to feel excited and confident about the race. The weather will heat up again this week, but it looks like by the end of next week fall-like weather may finally be here to stay (fingers-crossed). I also have some other stuff coming up that will be a nice change post-marathon!